12.18.07

I’ll give Andy Pettitte F.P. Santangelo this much credit : his admission of PED use following the release of the Mitchell Report has made it a bit easier for other players to come out the closet (after they’ve been outed, natch), and along with Brian Roberts, you can add ESPN’s Fernando Vina to the new list of those confessing to something-or-other.

You’ll note that Vina insists he wasn’t trying to “gain an edge”, much as Pettitte claimed his two-off HGH experiment was only motivated by wanting to help his team. So there’s your new spin going forward ; HGH users loathe to acknowledge the drug gave them a competitive advantage over other players recovering from injuries would instead have us believe that they’re merely guilty of being AWESOME TEAMMATES.

8 Responses to “Fernando Vina’s HGH Use : All About The Healing”

I love how sports bloggers have gone from defending the juicers of the steroids era ad nauseum to spending most of their time ridiculing the lame excuses being offered by said juicers. What a country!!!

I can’t speak for other bloggers, Rog. But given the level of invective aimed at Barry Bonds the last few years, it seems only fair that other players end up under the microscope. Some of the excuses might be legit ; my problem is when Vina or anyone else suggests HGH didn’t represent a competitive advantage.

The asshats at NoMaas have been trying to claim it was ok for Pettitte to use HGH because it was for rehab. Apparently, its not cheating if a pretty good pitcher can cut his rehab time from X months to X/2 months by using HGH and thus win his team a bunch more games while the oppositions’ non-cheating pitchers rehab the legit way.

Absolutely fucking ridiculous and the worst argument after the “HGH wasn’t banned until 2005″ argument.

HGH doesn’t represent a competitive advantage if all players players have equal access to it.

I’m not enraged by the “HGH wasn’t banned until recently” argument because it holds water and puts the onus on the league and owners rather than the players. Magowan, McLane, etc. filled glittering new ballparks with the aid of PED’s. Heck, they even managed to build new ballparks in Milwaukee and Pittsburgh.

Much as I love calling Roger Clemens a fraud, he’s no less crooked than the men he’s made rich over the years.

What the Mitchell Report makes clear is that everyone in these front offices knew who was taking PEDs, and did nothing about it…except devalue guys who might not play as well off the roids. If it seems like Vina has no idea how to explain himself — and it does, although that might be because he’s not very smart — that’s probably at least in part because he has never been asked by anyone from any of the organizations he played for to justify this stuff before. I think HGH is qualitatively different than steroids, too, and its use easier to justify, but since all this plays out in the shadiest of gray-market/black-market ways — via sub rosa clubhouse transactions or scrips from quacky doctors — it all seems about the same to me. And that’s more like cheating than not, until they find a way to regulate it so that everyone’s on a level chemical playing field.